Journal articles on the topic 'Guitar transcription'

Music transcription involves the transformation of an audio recording to common music notation, colloquially referred to as sheet music. Manually transcribing audio recordings is a difficult and time-consuming process, even for experienced musicians. In response, several algorithms have been proposed to automatically analyze and transcribe the notes sounding in an audio recording; however, these algorithms are often general-purpose, attempting to process any number of instruments producing any number of notes sounding simultaneously. This paper presents a polyphonic transcription algorithm that is constrained to processing the audio output of a single instrument, specifically an acoustic guitar. The transcription system consists of a novel note pitch estimation algorithm that uses a deep belief network and multi-label learning techniques to generate multiple pitch estimates for each analysis frame of the input audio signal. Using a compiled dataset of synthesized guitar recordings for evaluation, the algorithm described in this work results in an 11% increase in the f-measure of note transcriptions relative to Zhou et al.’s (2009) transcription algorithm in the literature. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of deep, multi-label learning for the task of polyphonic transcription.

Presents the results of the study in classical guitar music by Stravinsky. The author considers three pieces by Stravinsky where he used guitar and his transcription of the “Four Russian songs” suite (version of 1953-1954) that included a guitar part. The specificity of interpretation of the tone quality, the instrument capabilities in Stravinsky’s understanding and the features of composer’s style apparent in this music cycle are revealed. The author also focuses on the bell ringing effects that are particular of the piece.

Pitch transcription is basically identifying and copying pitch on an audio or music. In this case, the pitch of a solo instrument music is processed to find the composition of the music tones, the method used is autocorrelation. After processing, the system will produce pitch transcription results from the audio that has been processed. this research done digitalization of an old method of identifying pitches into an application that is able to transcribe pitches in an audio. This Pitch Transcription application was created using the Python programming language with Librosa library as a library for audio processing. The purpose of making this system is to facilitate the identification of pitch from a solo instrument music. This Application Feature itself besides being able to show the results of pitch transcription can also display the Onset Graph, Signal Graph play the results of the synthesis transcribed audio sounds. Testing in this study uses audio sourced from 4 single instruments, there are flute, piano, violin and acoustic guitar. The test results show that the implementation of the autocorrelation method in the solo instrument tone transcription application has an accuracy of 92.85%.

In this article, the author examines the improvisatory style of jazz musician Herbert Lawrence "Sonny" Greenwich. While numerous extra-musical sources inform the guitarist's performances, the cubist paintings of Paul Klee are particularly meaningful. Through transcription, analysis and interview, the author demonstrates that fretboard "diagrams"—which Greenwich suggests originate from Klee—act in a threefold manner. First, they afford Greenwich a personal way of discussing his craft, second they offer a formulaic and perceptual strategy for traversing various harmonic terrains and third these diagrams act as a surrogate music theory for the self-taught musician, affording him a unique method of organizing the guitar.

Biological features, such as genes and transcription factor binding sites, are often denoted with genome-based coordinates as the genomic features. While genome-based representation is usually very effective in correlating various biological features, it can be tedious to examine the relationship between RNA-related genomic features and the landmarks of RNA transcripts with existing tools due to the difficulty in the conversion between genome-based coordinates and RNA-based coordinates. We developed here an open sourceGuitarR/Bioconductor package for sketching the transcriptomic view of RNA-related biological features represented by genome based coordinates. Internally,Guitarpackage extracts the standardized RNA coordinates with respect to the landmarks of RNA transcripts, with which hundreds of millions of RNA-related genomic features can then be efficiently analyzed within minutes. We demonstrated the usage ofGuitarpackage in analyzing posttranscriptional RNA modifications (5-methylcytosine and N6-methyladenosine) derived from high-throughput sequencing approaches (MeRIP-Seq and RNA BS-Seq) and show that RNA 5-methylcytosine (m5C) is enriched in 5′UTR. The newly developedGuitarR/Bioconductor package achieves stable performance on the data tested and revealed novel biological insights. It will effectively facilitate the analysis of RNA methylation data and other RNA-related biological features in the future.

Background. The academic guitar art, which announced itself at the beginning of the XXI century as one of the dominant and sought-after forms of the concert music making, in recent decades has become the subject of scientific reflection. However, due to a later start time of its evolvement, it turned out to be less explored than other concert genres. The birth of the academic guitar art in the early twentieth century associated with the name of A. Segovia, together with whose creativity it stepped beyond the limits of the Spanish national culture and came to the world level. Creativity of the contemporaries and compatriots of A. Segovia, the famous guitarists of the first half of the twentieth century C. Romero, R. Sáinz de la Maza and M. Llobet, did not have that cultural and artistic weight, which could be a basis for ascension of the Spanish guitar art to the European professional heights. Exactly A. Segovia was able to do this. In spite of the fact that the importance of A. Segovia’s activities for the formation of the new performing guitar traditions of the twentieth century is enormous, it has not yet received its systemic coverage. Thus, the relevance of this article is caused, on the one hand, by the great interest in the academic guitar art in recent years, and on the other, by the lack of the special scientific studies dedicated to the performing art of the outstanding Spanish guitarist. Existing studies contain only incomplete historical data [3; 7] or the compressed socio-cultural panorama of A. Segovia’s creative activity and the period of formation of the guitar performing traditions of the twentieth century [1, p. 4–6]. Objectives. The proposed research considers the features of the performing art of A. Segovia at its different stages in order to identify the patterns of its evolvement and the main its achievements from the point of view of the contemporary guitar art. For the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the concert heritage of the Spanish maestro in the aspect of its legislative influence upon the modern academic guitar creativity is given. Methods of the research. The complex of general scientific research methods makes it possible to disclose the basic positions of the article: signification of the classical guitar in the family of the academic solo instruments (systems approach); the evolution paths of an academic guitar (historical approach); comprehension of the guitar creativity in a broad socio-cultural aspect (cultural approach); definition of the author’s performing style of A. Segovia (interpretational approach). Results. For comprehension of the evolution of A. Segovia’s performing arts, maestro’ concert programs are considered. The first big performance (March 12, 1916) included 19 pieces (Par I – the arrangements by A. Segovia and one piece by M. Llobet; Part II – the works by J. Bach, J. Haydn, F. Mendelssohn, F. Chopin, all transcribed for guitar by F. Tárrega; Part III – the music by I. Albeniz, E. Granados and one play by P. Tchaikovsky). At this stage of evolution of the academic guitar art, A. Segovia could not present in the program the works of the Renaissance epoch; besides, in the historical and cultural aspect, the program is formatted inconsequently. However, in our opinion, the program is logical and justified in its own way, and its third part that almost entirely formed from the works of the Spanish national classics one can consider as a response to the ideology of “Renacimiento” – the movement for the national revival of Spain. The ending of the decade of the fruitful concert activity of A. Segovia coincided with his tours in the territory of present-day Russia and Ukraine. In 1926, A. Segovia gave six concerts in Moscow and two concerts in Leningrad, and in 1927 – six concerts in Moscow, three concerts in Leningrad, and one each in Kharkov and Kiev. The analysis shows that the total number of works in A. Segovia’s repertoire list during his Moscow tour performances in 1926–1927 has grown to 75. They belonged to different historical eras and various performing styles, to 28 authors from different countries. The extensive repertoire corresponding to A. Segovia’s exquisite taste embodied in elegant performing interpretations, which reflected in the feedback from listeners and music critics. Over 10 years of his concert activity, the total repertoire of A. Segovia expanded significantly (up to 300 works), not only due to his own transcriptions of works by J. Bach, G. Handel, W. Mozart, J. Haydn, F. Schubert, F. Tárrega, I. Albeniz and E. Granados, but also thanks to the works of a new wave of composers: A. Tansman, F. Moreno Torroba, J. Turina, which created a number of pieces for guitar at the request of A. Segovia. Conclusions. Thus, contingently, A. Segovia’s concert activity one can divide into two big stages: before and after 1924. The culmination point of the first stage is related with the successful performance in Barcelona (1916), which eliminated some acoustic and psychological barriers that hampered guitar performers and organizers of concerts (A. Segovia is the first guitarist who was playing in the hall for 1000 seats). The first tour in Paris in April 1924, which began the second stage of the maestro’s concert activity, can be considered as a landmark event on the path of world recognition of A. Segovia. Henceforth the format of the concert programs of A. Segovia and his recordings on disks thought out clearly, it is structured delicately based on the musical styles of certain historical periods. An important place the works of modern composers occupied. The concert heritage of A. Segovia is a reflection of the evolution of the guitar repertoire. It progressed from the limited by the previous tradition in the early twentieth century up to the universal format, combining the best examples of the folk music (flamenco), the transcriptions of European classical music and the modern works bearing the newest sound images. Among the authors of such, at the request of A. Segovia, were M. Castelnuovo-Tedesko, F. Moreno Torroba, M. Ponce, J. Rodrigo, A. Tansman.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a painful and debilitating condition of synovial joints without any disease-modifying therapies [A. M. Valdes, T. D. Spector, Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 7, 23–32 (2011)]. We previously identified mechanosensitive PIEZO channels, PIEZO1 and PIEZO2, both expressed in articular cartilage, to function in chondrocyte mechanotransduction in response to injury [W. Lee et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 111, E5114–E5122 (2014); W. Lee, F. Guilak, W. Liedtke, Curr. Top. Membr. 79, 263–273 (2017)]. We therefore asked whether interleukin-1–mediated inflammatory signaling, as occurs in OA, influences Piezo gene expression and channel function, thus indicative of maladaptive reprogramming that can be rationally targeted. Primary porcine chondrocyte culture and human osteoarthritic cartilage tissue were studied. We found that interleukin-1α (IL-1α) up-regulated Piezo1 in porcine chondrocytes. Piezo1 expression was significantly increased in human osteoarthritic cartilage. Increased Piezo1 expression in chondrocytes resulted in a feed-forward pathomechanism whereby increased function of Piezo1 induced excess intracellular Ca2+ at baseline and in response to mechanical deformation. Elevated resting state Ca2+ in turn rarefied the F-actin cytoskeleton and amplified mechanically induced deformation microtrauma. As intracellular substrates of this OA-related inflammatory pathomechanism, in porcine articular chondrocytes exposed to IL-1α, we discovered that enhanced Piezo1 expression depended on p38 MAP-kinase and transcription factors HNF4 and ATF2/CREBP1. CREBP1 directly bound to the proximal PIEZO1 gene promoter. Taken together, these signaling and genetic reprogramming events represent a detrimental Ca2+-driven feed-forward mechanism that can be rationally targeted to stem the progression of OA.

Abstract Cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL) is an incurable skin homing T cell malignancy. We have previously reported p38 as therapeutic targets for CTCL.1 However, the mechanism underlying p38 signaling is not completely understood. To further investigate p38 and its downstream signaling components, we examined public database of gene expression and found that p38γ is overexpressed in CTCL as compared to normal T cells. In addition, p38γ has negligible expression in normal lymphoid tissues, with the exception of high level expressed in smooth and cardiac muscle cells. We have demonstrated that p38γ over-expression increases cell proliferation and knockdown of p38γ causes Hut78 cell death. p38γ plays an important role in inflammation-associated tumorigenesis3 and inhibition of its activity has emerged as a strategy to treat a spectrum of cancers.4 The transcription factor, NFATc4, downstream of p38γ, is also significantly up-regulated in CTCL cells by microarray analysis, and it is at non-detectable level in normal T cells.1We have demonstrated that shRNA-mediated knockdown of p38γ reduced NFATc4 mRNA levels in Hut78 cells, and that inhibition of NFATc4 by siRNA reduces the proliferation of CTCL cells. We also found that the cytokine IL17A functions downstream of p38γ and NFATc4, as knockdown of either p38γ or NFATc4 significantly reduced IL17A mRNA levels in Hut78 cells. This result suggests that IL17A is a target for transcriptionally activated NFATc4. Previously we have shown that IL17A rescues Hut78 cells from apoptosis induced by combined inhibition of NFAT and NFkB (treated with curcumin and Ly2228820). This implicates IL17A as a key mediator for CTCL survival. Therefore, we propose a novel p38γ - NFATc4 - IL17A signaling pathway in malignant T cells that promotes the survival of CTCL which provides potential therapeutic target against this disease. To further define the role of p38 and identify targets that increase the antitumor efficacy of p38 inhibition, we performed a synthetic lethal RNA interference (RNAi) screen in Hut78 cells treated with 10 µM of the p38 MAPK inhibitor Ly2228820. We transduced control and Ly2228820-treated Hut78 cells with a pooled retroviral RNAi library consisting of 4290 shRNAs that targeted more than 1000 genes involved in human cancers. If a shRNA from the library is not toxic to the control cells, but causes cell death in Ly2228820-treated cells, the gene targeted by this shRNA would be identified by the screen as synthetically lethal to p38 inhibition. Among many hits identified from the screen, we selected UCHL5 for further analysis. UCHL5encodes a deubiquitin enzyme that cleaves K48-linked polyubiquitin chains and plays an important role in the regulation of protein stability. Interestingly, combination of Ly2228820 and b-AP15, a small molecule inhibitor of UCHL5, significantly reduced the protein levels of NFATc4 isoform but not other NFAT isoforms. NFATc4 protein levels are known to be regulated by ubiquitin-proteasome pathway.2 Our finding thus suggests UCHL5 as a potential new regulator that stabilizes NFATc4 protein. Further studies are needed to confirm this prediction. More importantly, combination of Ly2228820 and b-AP15 enhanced apoptosis in CTCL cell lines (HH and Hut78) and primary Sézary cells, but was not toxic in normal PBMC cells. In summary, our findings suggest that the p38γ - NFATc4 - IL17A signaling pathway plays an important role in the survival of CTCL. In addition, improving the efficacy of targeting this pathway via p38 may also benefit from combined inhibition of UCHL5, a potentially important regulator of NFATc4 that needs further characterization. Reference: 1 Bliss-Moreau M, Coarfa C, Gunaratne PH, Guitart J, Krett NL, Rosen ST (2015). Identification of p38beta as a therapeutic target for the treatment of Sezary syndrome. The Journal of investigative dermatology135:599-608. 2 Fan Y, Xie P, Zhang T, Zhang H, Gu D, She M et al (2008). Regulation of the stability and transcriptional activity of NFATc4 by ubiquitination. FEBS letters582:4008-4014. 3 Qi X, Yin N, Ma S, Lepp A, Tang J, Jing W et al (2015). p38gamma MAPK Is a Therapeutic Target for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer by Stimulation of Cancer Stem-Like Cell Expansion. Stem cells33:2738-2747. 4 Yin N, Qi X, Tsai S, Lu Y, Basir Z, Oshima K et al (2015). p38gamma MAPK is required for inflammation-associated colon tumorigenesis. Oncogene. Disclosures Querfeld: Actelion: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Celgene: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau.

Penelitian ini membahas sebuah upaya pengembangan formasi ensambel gitar dalam rangka pencapaian suatu kesetaraan artistik terhadap penyajian sebuah konseto untuk orkestra dan solois instrumen tiup. Proses penelitian ini diterapkan dalam konteks pembelajaran dan pengajaran paket mata kuliah Koor/ Orkes/ Ensambel (KOE) pada kurikulum pendidikan tinggi musik di Indonesia. Permasalahan utama yang dibahas dalam studi ini ialah bagaimana menerapkan repertoar orkestra pada sebuah ensambel gitar? Tujuan dari pemecahan masalah tersebut ialah untuk memperkaya materi pengajaran ensambel gitar yang termasuk salah satu kelompok studi dari paket kelas-kelas KOE. Kontribusi hasil penelitian ini adalah rekonstruksi model pembelajaran ensambel gitar dari tingkat menengah hingga tinggi. Guna mencapai target yang telah ditetapkan, penelitian ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan kombinasi metodologis di antara metode transkripsi musikologis dengan metode tindakan kelas yang diadopsi pada studi material dan proses belajar ensambel gitar. Permasalahan yang teridentifikasi disimpulkan dengan pembuatan prototipe aransemen baru sebagai alternatif materi pengajaran melalui proses pengolahan editorial. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa keterbatasan gitar dalam menghasilkan kesetaraan terhadap kulalitas artistik orkestra dapat diatasi tidak hanya dengan mentranskrip reduksi pianonya tapi langsung dari skor orkestranya. Oleh karena itu, ensambel gitar dapat menjadi alternatif yang lebih baik dari versi pengiring piano dalam menyajikan sebuah konsert The Adaptation of Concerto on a Guitar Ensemble as the Enrichment Effort of the Ensamble Teaching Materials. This study discusses an effort in developing guitar ensemble formation in order to achieve an artistic equality to the performance of a concerto for orchestra and wind soloist. This is applied in the context of Indonesian higher music education’s curriculum for the class room teaching and learning of the choir/ orchestra/ ensemble (COE) subject package. The main problem discussed in this study is how to apply an orchestral repertoireire to an ensemble guitar? The purpose of this study is to enrich the teaching material of guitar ensemble, which is one among the COE classes. The result of this study is contributed to the reconstruction of guitar ensemble teaching model from middle to higher grades. To achieve the target that have formerly been set, this study has combined musicological transcription method and the class room action research which are adopted to research material study as well as guitar ensemble learning process. Problems that had identified was concluded by prototyping the new arrangement through transcription process from the concerto repertoire as the teaching material alternative, by editorial treatment. This study concludes that the guitar limitedness to result the equality with the orchestral artistic quality could be overcome not by transcribing from its piano reduction but directly from orchestral score. Because of that reason, guitar ensemble could be a better alternative to the piano accompaniment in performing a concerto for a wind solist, and at the same time it enriches guitar ensemble repertoire.

This research is a descriptive study of the phenomenon of Senjang art performance in the context of ceremonial events in the community of Sekayu city. This study used a qualitative approach, with data collection carried out by observation, interviews, and documentation, and data presentation techniques in the form of analytical descriptive writing. The results of this study are in the form of descriptions of the development of Senjang art in the city of Sekayu, and textual descriptions of the presentation of Senjang performances which include; the composition of the presentation of Senjang art, aspects of Senjang literary text, transcription of vocal music melodies, transcription of the main melody form of the musical instruments of Senjang, aspects of the players, the audience, and the place of the performance. Senjang is one of the traditional arts that has developed in Musi Banyuasin district, especially the city of Sekayu. Senjang is an oral literature of the type of pantun and talibun which in its presentation is combined with music and dance. This art has been inherited from generation to generation for a long time by the Musi Banyuasin community, especially the city of Sekayu. Senjang art initially only developed in Sungai Keruh sub-district, but over time this art began to develop in other areas around it, including in Babat Toman sub-district, Sanga Desa sub-district, and Sekayu district. In terms of the performance, Senjang is presented by telling rhymes spontaneously either singly (one person) or spoken by two people (usually in pairs) in an integrated manner, and accompanied by music. The accompaniment music in Senjang presentation usually uses a single organ, and there are some who use a single guitar, with the playing of short melodies that are repeated. In its presentation, the Senjang vocal music speech with accompanying musical instruments is not played simultaneously, but is played alternately.

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>This research is a descriptive study of the phenomenon of Senjang art performance in the context of ceremonial events in the community of Sekayu city. This study used a qualitative approach, with data collection carried out by observation, interviews, and documentation, and data presentation techniques in the form of analytical descriptive writing. The results of this study are in the form of descriptions of the development of Senjang art in the city of Sekayu, and textual descriptions of the presentation of Senjang performances which include; the composition of the presentation of Senjang art, aspects of Senjang literary text, transcription of vocal music melodies, transcription of the main melody form of the musical instruments of Senjang, aspects of the players, the audience, and the place of the performance. </span><span>Senjang is one of the traditional arts that has developed in Musi Banyuasin district, especially the city of Sekayu. Senjang is an oral literature of the type of pantun and talibun which in its presentation is combined with music and dance. This art has been inherited from generation to generation for a long time by the Musi Banyuasin community, especially the city of Sekayu. Senjang art initially only developed in Sungai Keruh sub-district, but over time this art began to develop in other areas around it, including in Babat Toman sub-district, Sanga Desa sub-district, and Sekayu district. In terms of the performance, Senjang is presented by telling rhymes spontaneously either singly (one person) or spoken by two people (usually in pairs) in an integrated manner, and accompanied by music. The accompaniment music in Senjang presentation usually uses a single organ, and there are some who use a single guitar, with the playing of short melodies that are repeated. In its presentation, the Senjang vocal music speech with accompanying musical instruments is not played simultaneously, but is played alternately. </span></p><p><span>Keyword : </span><span>Presentation Form, Senjang, Sekayu City<br /> </span></p></div></div></div>

La investigación tiene como objetivo analizar los factores que afectan el aprendizaje de las lenguas en espacios multilingües de la población de Aruba. Se trabajó una investigación de tipo experimental de campo, que mediante la aplicación del instrumento encuesta semiestructurada para recolectar la información, obtenida de una muestra poblacional como resultado exploratorio en la comunidad de Aruba en básica primaria, se buscó conocer las dificultades que tiene la comunidad en espacios multilingües y el ambiente en el que se presentan estos aprendizajes. Mediante el análisis cualitativo con un diseño descriptivo se busca identificar los factores que afectan el aprendizaje de las múltiples lenguas indispensables para el desarrollo de cada individuo e integración en la sociedad. Al final del estudio se puede inferir que los niños de la comunidad tienen un gran potencial para aprender más de una lengua y se reconoce la importancia de guiar y apoyar en los cuatro idiomas que se hablan en la comunidad Aruba. De acuerdo con los resultados de los indicadores obtenidos en el proceso de la investigación evidencia que, son varios los factores académicos, familiares y sociales los desafíos para mejorar los espacios colaborativos de aprendizaje en los sistemas educativos considerados en la población estudiada.

ObjectiveMicrobiota disorder promotes chronic inflammation and carcinogenesis. High glycolysis is associated with poor prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the potential correlation between the gut microbiota and glucose metabolism is unknown in CRC.Design18F-FDG (18F-fluorodeoxyglucose) PET (positron emission tomography)/CT image scanning data and microbiota PCR analysis were performed to measure the correlation between metabolic alterations and microbiota disorder in 33 patients with CRC. Multiple colorectal cancer models, metabolic analysis and Seahorse assay were established to assess the role of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) enolase1-intronic transcript 1 (ENO1-IT1) in Fusobacterium (F.) nucleatum-induced glucose metabolism and colorectal carcinogenesis. RNA immunoprecipitation and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing were conducted to identify potential targets of lncRNA ENO1-IT1.ResultsWe have found F. nucleatum abundance correlated with high glucose metabolism in patients with CRC. Furthermore, F. nucleatum supported carcinogenesis via increasing CRC cell glucose metabolism. Mechanistically, F. nucleatum activated lncRNA ENO1-IT1 transcription via upregulating the binding efficiency of transcription factor SP1 to the promoter region of lncRNA ENO1-IT1. Elevated ENO1-IT behaved as a guider modular for KAT7 histone acetyltransferase, specifying the histone modification pattern on its target genes, including ENO1, and consequently altering CRC biological function.ConclusionF. nucleatum and glucose metabolism are mechanistically, biologically and clinically connected to CRC. Targeting ENO1 pathway may be meaningful in treating patients with CRC with elevated F. nucleatum.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a vital role in a variety of biological functions in plant growth and development. In this study, we provided an overview of the molecular mechanisms of lncRNAs in interacting with other biomolecules with an emphasis on those lncRNAs validated only by low-throughput experiments. LncRNAs function through playing multiple roles, including sponger for sequestering RNA or DNA, guider or decoy for recruiting or hijacking transcription factors or peptides, and scaffold for binding with chromatin modification complexes, as well as precursor of microRNAs or small interfering RNAs. These regulatory roles have been validated in several plant species with a comprehensive list of 73 lncRNA–molecule interaction pairs in 16 plant species found so far, suggesting their commonality in the plant kingdom. Such initial findings of a small number of functional plant lncRNAs represent the beginning of what is to come as lncRNAs with unknown functions were found in orders of magnitude more than proteins.

augmentvb [ɔːgˈmɛnt]1. to make or become greater in number, amount, strength, etc.; increase2. Music: to increase (a major or perfect interval) by a semitone (Collins English Dictionary 107) Almost everything associated with Robert Johnson has been subject to some form of augmentation. His talent as a musician and songwriter has been embroidered by myth-making. Johnson’s few remaining artefacts—his photographic images, his grave site, other physical records of his existence—have attained the status of reliquary. Even the integrity of his forty-two surviving recordings is now challenged by audiophiles who posit they were musically and sonically augmented by speeding up—increasing the tempo and pitch. This article documents the promulgation of myth in the life and music of Robert Johnson. His disputed photographic images are cited as archetypal contested artefacts, augmented both by false claims and genuine new discoveries—some of which suggest Johnson’s cultural magnetism is so compelling that even items only tenuously connected to his work draw significant attention. Current challenges to the musical integrity of Johnson’s original recordings, that they were “augmented” in order to raise the tempo, are presented as exemplars of our on-going fascination with his life and work. Part literature review, part investigative history, it uses the phenomenon of augmentation as a prism to shed new light on this enigmatic figure. Johnson’s obscurity during his lifetime, and for twenty-three years after his demise in 1938, offered little indication of his future status as a musical legend: “As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note” (Wald, Escaping xv). Such anonymity allowed those who first wrote about his music to embrace and propagate the myths that grew around this troubled character and his apparently “supernatural” genius. Johnson’s first press notice, from a pseudonymous John Hammond writing in The New Masses in 1937, spoke of a mysterious character from “deepest Mississippi” who “makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur” (Prial 111). The following year Hammond eulogised the singer in profoundly romantic terms: “It still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way to phonograph records […] Johnson died last week at precisely the moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall” (19). The visceral awe experienced by subsequent generations of Johnson aficionados seems inspired by the remarkable capacity of his recordings to transcend space and time, reaching far beyond their immediate intended audience. “Johnson’s music changed the way the world looked to me,” wrote Greil Marcus, “I could listen to nothing else for months.” The music’s impact originates, at least in part, from the ambiguity of its origins: “I have the feeling, at times, that the reason Johnson has remained so elusive is that no one has been willing to take him at his word” (27-8). Three decades later Bob Dylan expressed similar sentiments over seven detailed pages of Chronicles: From the first note the vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up … it felt like a ghost had come into the room, a fearsome apparition …When he sings about icicles hanging on a tree it gives me the chills, or about milk turning blue … it made me nauseous and I wondered how he did that … It’s hard to imagine sharecroppers or plantation field hands at hop joints, relating to songs like these. You have to wonder if Johnson was playing for an audience that only he could see, one off in the future. (282-4) Such ready invocation of the supernatural bears witness to the profundity and resilience of the “lost bluesman” as a romantic trope. Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch have produced a painstaking genealogy of such a-historical misrepresentation. Early contributors include Rudi Blesch, Samuel B Charters, Frank Driggs’ liner notes for Johnson’s King of the Delta Blues Singers collection, and critic Pete Welding’s prolific 1960s output. Even comparatively recent researchers who ostensibly sought to demystify the legend couldn’t help but embellish the narrative. “It is undeniable that Johnson was fascinated with and probably obsessed by supernatural imagery,” asserted Robert Palmer (127). For Peter Guralnick his best songs articulate “the debt that must be paid for art and the Faustian bargain that Johnson sees at its core” (43). Contemporary scholarship from Pearson and McCulloch, James Banninghof, Charles Ford, and Elijah Wald has scrutinised Johnson’s life and work on a more evidential basis. This process has been likened to assembling a complicated jigsaw where half the pieces are missing: The Mississippi Delta has been practically turned upside down in the search for records of Robert Johnson. So far only marriage application signatures, two photos, a death certificate, a disputed death note, a few scattered school documents and conflicting oral histories of the man exist. Nothing more. (Graves 47) Such material is scrappy and unreliable. Johnson’s marriage licenses and his school records suggest contradictory dates of birth (Freeland 49). His death certificate mistakes his age—we now know that Johnson inadvertently founded another rock myth, the “27 Club” which includes fellow guitarists Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain (Wolkewitz et al., Segalstad and Hunter)—and incorrectly states he was single when he was twice widowed. A second contemporary research strand focuses on the mythmaking process itself. For Eric Rothenbuhler the appeal of Johnson’s recordings lies in his unique “for-the-record” aesthetic, that foreshadowed playing and song writing standards not widely realised until the 1960s. For Patricia Schroeder Johnson’s legend reveals far more about the story-tellers than it does the source—which over time has become “an empty center around which multiple interpretations, assorted viewpoints, and a variety of discourses swirl” (3). Some accounts of Johnson’s life seem entirely coloured by their authors’ cultural preconceptions. The most enduring myth, Johnson’s “crossroads” encounter with the Devil, is commonly redrawn according to the predilections of those telling the tale. That this story really belongs to bluesman Tommy Johnson has been known for over four decades (Evans 22), yet it was mistakenly attributed to Robert as recently as 1999 in French blues magazine Soul Bag (Pearson and McCulloch 92-3). Such errors are, thankfully, becoming less common. While the movie Crossroads (1986) brazenly appropriated Tommy’s story, the young walking bluesman in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) faithfully proclaims his authentic identity: “Thanks for the lift, sir. My name's Tommy. Tommy Johnson […] I had to be at that crossroads last midnight. Sell my soul to the devil.” Nevertheless the “supernatural” constituent of Johnson’s legend remains an irresistible framing device. It inspired evocative footage in Peter Meyer’s Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson (1998). Even the liner notes to the definitive Sony Music Robert Johnson: The Centennial Edition celebrate and reclaim his myth: nothing about this musician is more famous than the word-of-mouth accounts of him selling his soul to the devil at a midnight crossroads in exchange for his singular mastery of blues guitar. It has become fashionable to downplay or dismiss this account nowadays, but the most likely source of the tale is Johnson himself, and the best efforts of scholars to present this artist in ordinary, human terms have done little to cut through the mystique and mystery that surround him. Repackaged versions of Johnson’s recordings became available via Amazon.co.uk and Spotify when they fell out of copyright in the United Kingdom. Predictable titles such as Contracted to the Devil, Hellbound, Me and the Devil Blues, and Up Jumped the Devil along with their distinctive “crossroads” artwork continue to demonstrate the durability of this myth [1]. Ironically, Johnson’s recordings were made during an era when one-off exhibited artworks (such as his individual performances of music) first became reproducible products. Walter Benjamin famously described the impact of this development: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art […] the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. (7) Marybeth Hamilton drew on Benjamin in her exploration of white folklorists’ efforts to document authentic pre-modern blues culture. Such individuals sought to preserve the intensity of the uncorrupted and untutored black voice before its authenticity and uniqueness could be tarnished by widespread mechanical reproduction. Two artefacts central to Johnson’s myth, his photographs and his recorded output, will now be considered in that context. In 1973 researcher Stephen LaVere located two pictures in the possession of his half–sister Carrie Thompson. The first, a cheap “dime store” self portrait taken in the equivalent of a modern photo booth, shows Johnson around a year into his life as a walking bluesman. The second, taken in the Hooks Bros. studio in Beale Street, Memphis, portrays a dapper and smiling musician on the eve of his short career as a Vocalion recording artist [2]. Neither was published for over a decade after their “discovery” due to fears of litigation from a competing researcher. A third photograph remains unpublished, still owned by Johnson’s family: The man has short nappy hair; he is slight, one foot is raised, and he is up on his toes as though stretching for height. There is a sharp crease in his pants, and a handkerchief protrudes from his breast pocket […] His eyes are deep-set, reserved, and his expression forms a half-smile, there seems to be a gentleness about him, his fingers are extraordinarily long and delicate, his head is tilted to one side. (Guralnick 67) Recently a fourth portrait appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, in Vanity Fair. Vintage guitar seller Steven Schein discovered a sepia photograph labelled “Old Snapshot Blues Guitar B. B. King???” [sic] while browsing Ebay and purchased it for $2,200. Johnson’s son positively identified the image, and a Houston Police Department forensic artist employed face recognition technology to confirm that “all the features are consistent if not identical” (DiGiacomo 2008). The provenance of this photograph remains disputed, however. Johnson’s guitar appears overly distressed for what would at the time be a new model, while his clothes reflect an inappropriate style for the period (Graves). Another contested “Johnson” image found on four seconds of silent film showed a walking bluesman playing outside a small town cinema in Ruleville, Mississippi. It inspired Bob Dylan to wax lyrical in Chronicles: “You can see that really is Robert Johnson, has to be – couldn’t be anyone else. He’s playing with huge, spiderlike hands and they magically move over the strings of his guitar” (287). However it had already been proved that this figure couldn’t be Johnson, because the background movie poster shows a film released three years after the musician’s death. The temptation to wish such items genuine is clearly a difficult one to overcome: “even things that might have been Robert Johnson now leave an afterglow” (Schroeder 154, my italics). Johnson’s recordings, so carefully preserved by Hammond and other researchers, might offer tangible and inviolate primary source material. Yet these also now face a serious challenge: they run too rapidly by a factor of up to 15 per cent (Gibbens; Wilde). Speeding up music allowed early producers to increase a song’s vibrancy and fit longer takes on to their restricted media. By slowing the recording tempo, master discs provided a “mother” print that would cause all subsequent pressings to play unnaturally quickly when reproduced. Robert Johnson worked for half a decade as a walking blues musician without restrictions on the length of his songs before recording with producer Don Law and engineer Vincent Liebler in San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937). Longer compositions were reworked for these sessions, re-arranging and edited out verses (Wald, Escaping). It is also conceivable that they were purposefully, or even accidentally, sped up. (The tempo consistency of machines used in early field recordings across the South has often been questioned, as many played too fast or slow (Morris).) Slowed-down versions of Johnson’s songs from contributors such as Angus Blackthorne and Ron Talley now proliferate on YouTube. The debate has fuelled detailed discussion in online blogs, where some contributors to specialist audio technology forums have attempted to decode a faintly detectable background hum using spectrum analysers. If the frequency of the alternating current that powered Law and Liebler’s machine could be established at 50 or 60 Hz it might provide evidence of possible tempo variation. A peak at 51.4 Hz, one contributor argues, suggests “the recordings are 2.8 per cent fast, about half a semitone” (Blischke). Such “augmentation” has yet to be fully explored in academic literature. Graves describes the discussion as “compelling and intriguing” in his endnotes, concluding “there are many pros and cons to the argument and, indeed, many recordings over the years have been speeded up to make them seem livelier” (124). Wald ("Robert Johnson") provides a compelling and detailed counter-thesis on his website, although he does acknowledge inconsistencies in pitch among alternate master takes of some recordings. No-one who actually saw Robert Johnson perform ever called attention to potential discrepancies between the pitch of his natural and recorded voice. David “Honeyboy” Edwards, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Johnny Shines were all interviewed repeatedly by documentarians and researchers, but none ever raised the issue. Conversely Johnson’s former girlfriend Willie Mae Powell was visibly affected by the familiarity in his voice on hearing his recording of the tune Johnson wrote for her, “Love in Vain”, in Chris Hunt’s The Search for Robert Johnson (1991). Clues might also lie in the natural tonality of Johnson’s instrument. Delta bluesmen who shared Johnson’s repertoire and played slide guitar in his style commonly used a tuning of open G (D-G-D-G-B-G). Colloquially known as “Spanish” (Gordon 2002, 38-42) it offers a natural home key of G major for slide guitar. We might therefore expect Johnson’s recordings to revolve around the tonic (G) or its dominant (D) -however almost all of his songs are a full tone higher, in the key of A or its dominant E. (The only exceptions are “They’re Red Hot” and “From Four Till Late” in C, and “Love in Vain” in G.) A pitch increase such as this might be consistent with an increase in the speed of these recordings. Although an alternative explanation might be that Johnson tuned his strings particularly tightly, which would benefit his slide playing but also make fingering notes and chords less comfortable. Yet another is that he used a capo to raise the key of his instrument and was capable of performing difficult lead parts in relatively high fret positions on the neck of an acoustic guitar. This is accepted by Scott Ainslie and Dave Whitehill in their authoritative volume of transcriptions At the Crossroads (11). The photo booth self portrait of Johnson also clearly shows a capo at the second fret—which would indeed raise open G to open A (in concert pitch). The most persuasive reasoning against speed tampering runs parallel to the argument laid out earlier in this piece, previous iterations of the Johnson myth have superimposed their own circumstances and ignored the context and reality of the protagonist’s lived experience. As Wald argues, our assumptions of what we think Johnson ought to sound like have little bearing on what he actually sounded like. It is a compelling point. When Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, and other surviving bluesmen were “rediscovered” during the 1960s urban folk revival of North America and Europe they were old men with deep and resonant voices. Johnson’s falsetto vocalisations do not, therefore, accord with the commonly accepted sound of an authentic blues artist. Yet Johnson was in his mid-twenties in 1936 and 1937; a young man heavily influenced by the success of other high pitched male blues singers of his era. people argue that what is better about the sound is that the slower, lower Johnson sounds more like Son House. Now, House was a major influence on Johnson, but by the time Johnson recorded he was not trying to sound like House—an older player who had been unsuccessful on records—but rather like Leroy Carr, Casey Bill Weldon, Kokomo Arnold, Lonnie Johnson, and Peetie Wheatstraw, who were the big blues recording stars in the mid–1930s, and whose vocal styles he imitated on most of his records. (For example, the ooh-well-well falsetto yodel he often used was imitated from Wheatstraw and Weldon.) These singers tended to have higher, smoother voices than House—exactly the sound that Johnson seems to have been going for, and that the House fans dislike. So their whole argument is based on the fact that they prefer the older Delta sound to the mainstream popular blues sound of the 1930s—or, to put it differently, that their tastes are different from Johnson’s own tastes at the moment he was recording. (Wald, "Robert Johnson") Few media can capture an audible moment entirely accurately, and the idea of engineering a faithful reproduction of an original performance is also only one element of the rationale for any recording. Commercial engineers often aim to represent the emotion of a musical moment, rather than its totality. John and Alan Lomax may have worked as documentarians, preserving sound as faithfully as possible for the benefit of future generations on behalf of the Library of Congress. Law and Liebler, however, were producing exciting and profitable commercial products for a financial gain. Paradoxically, then, whatever the “real” Robert Johnson sounded like (deeper voice, no mesmeric falsetto, not such an extraordinarily adept guitar player, never met the Devil … and so on) the mythical figure who “sold his soul at the crossroads” and shipped millions of albums after his death may, on that basis, be equally as authentic as the original. Schroeder draws on Mikhail Bakhtin to comment on such vacant yet hotly contested spaces around the Johnson myth. For Bakhtin, literary texts are ascribed new meanings by consecutive generations as they absorb and respond to them. Every age re–accentuates in its own way the works of its most immediate past. The historical life of classic works is in fact the uninterrupted process of their social and ideological re–accentuation [of] ever newer aspects of meaning; their semantic content literally continues to grow, to further create out of itself. (421) In this respect Johnson’s legend is a “classic work”, entirely removed from its historical life, a free floating form re-contextualised and reinterpreted by successive generations in order to make sense of their own cultural predilections (Schroeder 57). As Graves observes, “since Robert Johnson’s death there has seemed to be a mathematical equation of sorts at play: the less truth we have, the more myth we get” (113). The threads connecting his real and mythical identity seem so comprehensively intertwined that only the most assiduous scholars are capable of disentanglement. Johnson’s life and work seem destined to remain augmented and contested for as long as people want to play guitar, and others want to listen to them. Notes[1] Actually the dominant theme of Johnson’s songs is not “the supernatural” it is his inveterate womanising. Almost all Johnson’s lyrics employ creative metaphors to depict troubled relationships. Some even include vivid images of domestic abuse. In “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues” a woman threatens him with a gun. In “32–20 Blues” he discusses the most effective calibre of weapon to shoot his partner and “cut her half in two.” In “Me and the Devil Blues” Johnson promises “to beat my woman until I get satisfied”. However in The Lady and Mrs Johnson five-time W. C. Handy award winner Rory Block re-wrote these words to befit her own cultural agenda, inverting the original sentiment as: “I got to love my baby ‘til I get satisfied”.[2] The Gibson L-1 guitar featured in Johnson’s Hooks Bros. portrait briefly became another contested artefact when it appeared in the catalogue of a New York State memorabilia dealership in 2006 with an asking price of $6,000,000. The Australian owner had apparently purchased the instrument forty years earlier under the impression it was bona fide, although photographic comparison technology showed that it couldn’t be genuine and the item was withdrawn. “Had it been real, I would have been able to sell it several times over,” Gary Zimet from MIT Memorabilia told me in an interview for Guitarist Magazine at the time, “a unique item like that will only ever increase in value” (Stewart 2010). References Ainslie, Scott, and Dave Whitehall. Robert Johnson: At the Crossroads – The Authoritative Guitar Transcriptions. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Publishing, 1992. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. Banks, Russell. “The Devil and Robert Johnson – Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.” The New Republic 204.17 (1991): 27-30. Banninghof, James. “Some Ramblings on Robert Johnson’s Mind: Critical Analysis and Aesthetic in Delta Blues.” American Music 15/2 (1997): 137-158. Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Blackthorne, Angus. “Robert Johnson Slowed Down.” YouTube.com 2011. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/user/ANGUSBLACKTHORN?feature=watch›. Blesh, Rudi. Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz. New York: Knopf, 1946. Blischke, Michael. “Slowing Down Robert Johnson.” The Straight Dope 2008. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=461601›. Block, Rory. The Lady and Mrs Johnson. Rykodisc 10872, 2006. Charters, Samuel. The Country Blues. New York: De Capo Press, 1959. Collins UK. Collins English Dictionary. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 2010. DiGiacomo, Frank. “A Disputed Robert Johnson Photo Gets the C.S.I. Treatment.” Vanity Fair 2008. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2008/10/a-disputed-robert-johnson-photo-gets-the-csi-treatment›. DiGiacomo, Frank. “Portrait of a Phantom: Searching for Robert Johnson.” Vanity Fair 2008. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/11/johnson200811›. Dylan, Bob. Chronicles Vol 1. London: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Evans, David. Tommy Johnson. London: November Books, 1971. Ford, Charles. “Robert Johnson’s Rhythms.” Popular Music 17.1 (1998): 71-93. Freeland, Tom. “Robert Johnson: Some Witnesses to a Short Life.” Living Blues 150 (2000): 43-49. Gibbens, John. “Steady Rollin’ Man: A Revolutionary Critique of Robert Johnson.” Touched 2004. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html›. Gioia, Ted. Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionised American Music. London: W. W. Norton & Co, 2008. Gioia, Ted. "Robert Johnson: A Century, and Beyond." Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection. Sony Music 88697859072, 2011. Gordon, Robert. Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters. London: Pimlico Books, 2002. Graves, Tom. Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson. Spokane: Demers Books, 2008. Guralnick, Peter. Searching for Robert Johnson: The Life and Legend of the "King of the Delta Blues Singers". London: Plume, 1998. Hamilton, Marybeth. In Search of the Blues: Black Voices, White Visions. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007. Hammond, John. From Spirituals to Swing (Dedicated to Bessie Smith). New York: The New Masses, 1938. Johnson, Robert. “Hellbound.” Amazon.co.uk 2011. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hellbound/dp/B0063S8Y4C/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1376605065&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=robert+johnson+hellbound›. ———. “Contracted to the Devil.” Amazon.co.uk 2002. 1 Aug. 2013. ‹http://www.amazon.co.uk/Contracted-The-Devil-Robert-Johnson/dp/B00006F1L4/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1376830351&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Contracted+to+The+Devil›. ———. King of the Delta Blues Singers. Columbia Records CL1654, 1961. ———. “Me and the Devil Blues.” Amazon.co.uk 2003. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.amazon.co.uk/Me-Devil-Blues-Robert-Johnson/dp/B00008SH7O/ref=sr_1_16?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1376604807&sr=1-16&keywords=robert+johnson›. ———. “The High Price of Soul.” Amazon.co.uk 2007. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Price-Soul-Robert-Johnson/dp/B000LC582C/ref=sr_1_39?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1376604863&sr=1-39&keywords=robert+johnson›. ———. “Up Jumped the Devil.” Amazon.co.uk 2005. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.amazon.co.uk/Up-Jumped-Devil-Robert-Johnson/dp/B000B57SL8/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1376829917&sr=1-2&keywords=Up+Jumped+The+Devil›. Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. London: Plume, 1997. Morris, Christopher. “Phonograph Blues: Robert Johnson Mastered at Wrong Speed?” Variety 2010. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.varietysoundcheck.com/2010/05/phonograph-blues-robert-johnson-mastered-at-wrong-speed.html›. Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? DVD. Universal Pictures, 2000. Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago’s South Side to the World. London: Penguin Books, 1981. Pearson, Barry Lee, and Bill McCulloch. Robert Johnson: Lost and Found. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Prial, Dunstan. The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Rothenbuhler, Eric W. “For–the–Record Aesthetics and Robert Johnson’s Blues Style as a Product of Recorded Culture.” Popular Music 26.1 (2007): 65-81. Rothenbuhler, Eric W. “Myth and Collective Memory in the Case of Robert Johnson.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24.3 (2007): 189-205. Schroeder, Patricia. Robert Johnson, Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture (Music in American Life). Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Segalstad, Eric, and Josh Hunter. The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock and Roll. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2009. Stewart, Jon. “Rock Climbing: Jon Stewart Concludes His Investigation of the Myths behind Robert Johnson.” Guitarist Magazine 327 (2010): 34. The Search for Robert Johnson. DVD. Sony Pictures, 1991. Talley, Ron. “Robert Johnson, 'Sweet Home Chicago', as It REALLY Sounded...” YouTube.com 2012. 1 Aug. 2013. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCHod3_yEWQ›. Wald, Elijah. Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. London: HarperCollins, 2005. ———. The Robert Johnson Speed Recording Controversy. Elijah Wald — Writer, Musician 2012. 1 Aug. 2013. ‹http://www.elijahwald.com/johnsonspeed.html›. Wilde, John . “Robert Johnson Revelation Tells Us to Put the Brakes on the Blues: We've Been Listening to the Immortal 'King of the Delta Blues' at the Wrong Speed, But Now We Can Hear Him as He Intended.” The Guardian 2010. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/may/27/robert-johnson-blues›. Wolkewitz, M., A. Allignol, N. Graves, and A.G. Barnett. “Is 27 Really a Dangerous Age for Famous Musicians? Retrospective Cohort Study.” British Medical Journal 343 (2011): d7799. 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7799›.

Abstract Background The persistence of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in the body fluids of patients with the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may increase the potential risk of viral transmission. There is still uncertainty on whether the recommended quarantine duration is sufficient to reduce the risk of transmission. This study aimed to investigate the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the nasopharyngeal, blood, urine, and stool samples of patients with COVID-19. Methods In this hospital-based longitudinal study, 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were recruited between March 2020 and August 2020 in Guilan Province, north of Iran. Nasopharyngeal, blood, urine, and stool samples were obtained from each participant at the time of hospital admission, upon discharge, 1 week after discharge, and every 2 weeks until all samples were negative for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay. A survival analysis was also performed to identify the duration of viral persistence. Results The median duration of viral RNA persistence in the nasopharyngeal samples was 8 days from the first positive RT-PCR result upon admission (95% CI 6.91–9.09); the maximum duration of viral shedding was 25 days from admission. Positive blood, urine, and stool RT-PCR results were detected in 24%, 7%, and 6% of the patients, respectively. The median duration of viral persistence in the blood, urine, and stool samples was 7 days (95% CI 6.07–7.93), 6 days (95% CI 4.16–8.41), and 13 days (95% CI 6.96–19.4), respectively. Also, the maximum duration of viral persistence in the blood, urine, and stool samples was 17, 11, and 42 days from admission, respectively. Conclusion According to the present results, immediately after the hospitalized patients were discharged, no evidence of viral genetic materials was found. Therefore, appropriate treatments were selected for the patients at this hospital. However, we recommend further investigations on a larger sample size in multi-center and prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effects of different drugs on the shedding of the virus through body secretions.

The digitisation of herbarium collections has shown to provide a growing resource in conservation science. Mobilising the data on portals such as GBIF allows researchers to access key taxonomic, habitat and geographical data that would otherwise be unavailable unless institutions are physically visited. These data are used notably in conservation assessments, distribution studies and publication of new species (Canteiro et al. 2019). The herbarium specimens held in Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Natural History Museum, London, and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh are an unparalleled resource, estimated to hold representatives of around 85% of known plant species. By working collectively for the first time on a non-type material digitisation project, the three institutions collaborated to generate data for the subtribe Phaseolinae and rosewoods totalling 37,000 legume specimens. This pilot project was made possible through Department for Environment Food &amp; Rural Affairs (DEFRA)-allocated, Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding. This aid money is distributed by the UK government in its “global efforts to defeat poverty, tackle instability and create prosperity in developing countries”. This project focused on two case-studies: Study i. Supporting development of dry beans as a sustainable and resilient crop. Beans from the subtribe Phaseolinae, including cowpeas, lablab and wild beans, are extremely tolerant of poor-quality soils and drought. As a consequence they are particularly suitable for the low-input agricultural production systems. An estimated 14.5 million hectares of land is used for planting of cowpea each year with around 80% of that in Development Assistance Committee countries in sub Saharan Africa. Study ii. Aiding conservation and sustainable use of rosewoods and padauk (Dalbergia L.f. and Pterocarpus Jacq.). Dalbergia is distributed throughout tropical Asia, Africa and the Americas with many species being regionally endemic. Species also vary in habit from shrubs and trees to robust lianas. Pterocarpus is also pantropically distributed in a wide variety of habitats. However, suitable habitat across the natural range of these genera is now limited for many species due to a range of threats, namely deforestation, forest conversion for agriculture/human development, and logging. The timber from many species of Dalbergia and Pterocarpus has long been prized for its high-quality wood used for construction, fine furniture, cabinet work, marquetry and inlay, ethnic carvings, pianos, guitars and other musical instruments. All Dalbergia and most of the timber species of Pterocarpus are now listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix II and the Brazilian D. nigra is listed on Appendix I. There is a huge illegal trade in these genera and serial depletion across the globe is a real and substantial risk to their survival (Winfield et al. 2016). This project used novel high-throughput methodologies and acted as a pilot study for future collaborative mass digitisation efforts. Specimens were taken from the collections, barcoded and minimal data fields captured, before high resolution images were created and the specimens returned. A subset of these was further subjected to full or partial label transcription via the use of the Atlas of Living Australia's DigiVol crowdsourcing platform or via in-house data capture. The resulting datasets will be made available via GBIF and partner sites and will be used to perform gap analyses on the collections across the institutions. We will examine the benefits of combined institutional data for these groups, assess how many species are represented in total and the geographic coverage of these collections. Use of the data will be measured by the number of downloads from GBIF and observing in-house use cases. Two research projects have just begun within Kew, using the data gathered for Pterocarpus and Lablab Adans., georeferencing for which is already underway and will contribute to conservation assessments and other measurable outputs. A data paper is planned which will also assist with tracking future use of the data set and help demonstrate the impact of the digitisation.

1. Introduction: How the word 'chat' can be demeaning I think the editors mean the word 'chat' to be something of a tease. They remind us that to call something 'chat' might be to strip it of anything more serious or substantial it might be doing and, by extension, to weaken pretty well all talk. It joins 'mere talk', 'rhetoric', 'chatter' and of course 'gossip', with the pungent flavouring of sexism as an added extra. It seems that chat is limp, directionless, passive. Whoever gets to call something 'chat' has scored a win in a battle. Let's just stay with this image for a moment. Suppose it is a rhetorical victory. Scored for which side? In a battle against who or what? Well, for a commonsense view of the world that rates objects over practices, things over their descriptions, and facts over the discovery of facts. And that commonsense view, of course, is the high street version of tangled scholars' web of philosophies -- realism, materialism and essentialism. But breathe easy, because I'm not going to get us stuck in that web. All I want to do is point out -- as has long been pointed out before, especially by feminists taking a cool look at 'female language' - that some uses of the word 'chat' betray a very old-fashioned view of language. To call this edition of M/C 'Chat' is to examine that attitude. The editors want to rate practices over objects, descriptions over what they describe, and the act of discovery over what is discovered. Or at least, even if one doesn't all want to go that far, to redress the balance a little in each case. The attitude the editors want to correct is a rather complacent one. It takes people's exchange of talk as just that; as a means of transmitting what's in one person's head into the head of the other person, more or less. Inefficient, noisy and unreliable, but fixable by technology. This is, of course the 'conduit' metaphor so devastatingly unmasked by Reddy in 1979. But it would be good to see some actual examples of real people really using the word; all this has been rather hypothetical so far. In fact, what we shall find is a bit of a paradox. It turns out, if I can prefigure the action, that when people use the word 'chat' to decribe some stretch of talk, what they want to do (at least in the data I have) is not to sneer at it -- quite the contrary. But it is nevertheless highly rhetorical. It does a job. The speaker tends to use it to promote a description of a warm, informal and above all blameless event, just when there might be reason to believe that in fact something rather different would be more accurate. 2. How to analyse talk as consequential? Let me pause for a moment. Soon I shall be doing a quick survey of some examples of actual live usage of the word. I should say, in parenthesis, that M/C offered me the wonderful opportunity of actually having a link to an audio sample of these extracts, and had the data come from public sources (say from talk radio or a political speech) then I would have jumped at the chance. That way you would have been able yourself to catch the flavour of the talk undiluted by transcription conventions and the overwhelming blandness of print. But all the extracts I shall use in the article are from private conversations, the participants in which didn't give permission for their voices to be broadcast, so I'm afraid that opportunity must be passed up. But given I have transcripts, what now? How to think about language-in-use? Obviously, I have to put my money where my mouth is and treat them not like 'chat' in that demeaning, inconsequential caricature I mentioned at the beginning (and against which this whole issue of M/C is dedicated). What are the broad alternatives available? There are, loosely speaking, two sorts of things one could do, familiar to all students of language. A couple of images will be helpful, if a bit crude. The first is the pearl necklace. Here, the interesting things about the talk are its content (pearls or ivory pieces?) and its setting (one string? two?). Less fancifully, the interest is in asking: what words, what speakers, what occasion? You can trace that from William Labov and his street-level sociolinguistics (1972), or further back if you want to. What you get is a thorough rejection of the words + settings = chat. You discover, by empirical comparison of what words in what settings, such thorough non-'chat' states of affairs as social location, social discourses and social power. If the pearl necklace doesn't appeal -- it seems a bit static perhaps -- then how about the origami bird? In its prior life as undistinguished flat sheet of paper it fails to command much attention. It's the transformation that fascinates. You have to fold it up to produce it, and you have to fold it up in a certain way if you don't want it to produce an aeroplane or a hat or just a disaster. The interesting things, of course, are the details (which side do you fold first? where do you tuck?) and how that produces the beautiful end result. Or, less fancifully, the sequential structure of talk in interaction, how one part supports and constrains the next and how a stretch of it achieves social goals (beautiful or otherwise). Now for the rest of the paper I'm going to try a bit of origami, or rather, some origami-in-reverse. I'm going to try and get across the spirit of Conversation Analysis and, without spraying around too many technical terms (indeed, any, if I can help it) I'm going to take a stretch of talk and see how it folds and tucks together to make it what it is. Doing that will, I hope, show up things about it that might pass unnoticed otherwise). Readers whose fancy is tickled for this sort of thing might well want to have a look at the references at the end of the article to take it all further. 3. Example 1. "about two years ago I came round an':: (..) spent some time chattin' didn't we" Let's make a start with this case. Here we have an encounter between a psychologist and a person he is about to interview. The interview proper hasn't actually started yet, and we can read the lines below as the interviewer 'working up to' the start of the interview proper. Part of it is to remind MA that the psychologist had seen him before. Notice how the psychologist uses the word 'chatting' to describe that earlier encounter. In line 11, MR describes his previous encounter as involving "chattin'. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. I know I shouldn't be calling in evidence which the reader can't get hold of, but Mark Rapley, the psychologist involved (and with whom I worked on the analysis; see Rapley and Antaki) pointed to that line and said to me that ('in fact') his previous dealings with MA, far from being 'chatting', had been a formal administration of a questionnaire, with all the paraphernalia of paper and pencil, and strict question and answer rights and obligations, all going down on the record. "Chattin'"? Calling it "chattin'" obliterates all that in favour of something altogether more homely and friendly. Look at what team of players it's sent out onto the field with: he "came round" (rather, than, say, 'paid an official visit') and "spent some time" (rather than 'completed my business'. They did it together -- hence the "didn't we?" The psychologist was "jus' (..) watchin' what was going on" -- not intervening, merely casually watching the world go by; note also the dropped g's. Now he's back to "see how you were gettin' on" (rather than 'administer a standardised assessment questionnaire'"). What an assembly. I'm trying to leave off any guess at what the interviewer's intentions or motives are -- we just can't know such things. But we can certainly have something to say about the effects his words give off. The origami structure that emerges from the folding is one of the 'chat' having been an interaction off the record, personal and friendly; all hearably at odds with the business the interviewer is officially prosecuting. 4. Example 2: "what Tim does (.) which is come and chat" Here is a very similar case, this time in a committee meeting: Again, I'll briefly gloss the scene (based on the previous talk, and visible in such terms as 'matters arising', the thanks expressed by one speaker to another, and the "we turn to" topic change in line 19/20). A committee meeting is in session, and AC is touting for new names to replace a member who is leaving. Committee membership is, by definition, something that is carefully regulated in standing orders and by convention, and is quite capable of being described in the most off-putting bureaucratic language (as it might be, say, were an errant member being disciplined for some infraction or other, and the thing became legalistic). Here it isn't. How does AC fold it up? AC in lines 1 to 9 is working up a request for other to nominate candidates to replace Tim Brown (all names are of course pseudonyms). We leave aside consideration of how he folds his talk so as to make the request as he does (rather than, say, deliver it as a petulant blast against his colleagues for not having provided him with any names so far). Our interest is in how the folds involve the description 'chat'. Like the psychologist interviewer in extract [1], AC bundles the 'chat' word into a description of the whole scene -- that the postgraduate representative will "come and chat," and that the interviewer "came round an':: (..)spent some time chattin'". To bundle up the description with the act of arrival is an elegantly efficient way of implying that this is the person's interest and motive in the interaction -- what they're there for. This way any candidate member can be reassured that the thing is much less onerous, official and formal than it would have sounded had AC used the bureaucratic description buried away in the Committee statutes. 'Chat', in this fold of the talk, works to eliminate the consequentiality and offputtingness of the event -- even though, of course, when the new member is inducted onto the Committee, he or she will be subject to all the dread rules and regulations that lurk in the other, hidden bureaucratic description. 5. Example 3: "we sat and chatted til about eleven" Here is another case, where, probably because the setting is not as institutional as in the first two, working out what 'chat' is doing will take us a bit more work. First the gloss. Gordon is on the phone to Danielle and talking about what he was doing the other night - we could dwell a little on his description of his guitar performance ('it went down really well') but we'll skip straight to where "chatted" appears. Unlike the previous two cases, it isn't bundled up with arrival at the scene ("come and chat" and "I came round an':: (..)spent some time chattin'"), but it does still get bundled with something -- sitting -- which parcels it up nicely as a combination-verb, something done while doing something else. Gordon and the others had no plans here; the food and wine had been consumed, then "we sat (0.3) an:' chatted (0.4) til: about eleven". Now what does such a description do for his then being struck by the thought that he'd go home and 'just phone her' (".hh then I thought (0.3) I'll come back (0.3) an' I'll jus' jus' phone you t'say that uh I'd like t'see you")? It's a magnificent play of accountability -- it holds off a collection of implications which might damage the tender sentiment presumably involved in wanting to tell someone you'd like to see them. Sitting and chatting is (notwithstanding the wine) not being drunk; it's with other people, so it's not sad-sack lonely rumination; still less is it insistent, stalking, recriminative or even violent obsession. Thinking of Danielle after (merely) being with others sitting and chatting till eleven disarms all of those possibilities; as the discursive psychologists have it (Edwards and Potter 1992) , this is a piece of 'stake management'. Gordon is inoculating himself against being seen to have the wrong sort of motivations. 'Chat' here is used as a part of a positive rhetorical strategy to have sentiments, but of the right sort. 6. Example 4: "I said to him, you know, come down 'n have a chat with me" One last example to see us out. This time we are in a marital counselling session, and the husband's ('Jeff') exams have been part of the topic of conversation, which I will gloss as being about the attention each partner pays to the other. 'Mary' now speaks. Once again the speaker is exploiting the pleasantly unspecific glow that 'chat' can have. Mary wanted Jeff to come down from 'upstairs' and 'have a chat' with her. Against this she puts words in his mouth: "I've gotta start my revising," and then her own commentary -- it was the same "every ni:ght, (.) for o:hh ye:ars.", regular as clockwork and at decidedly antisocial hours. She "never had anyone to ta:lk to" as a consequence. So the hearer is faced with Jeff's choice -- to come down from upstairs (remote, cold) and have a chat with Mary; or pursue his mechanical, laborious, self-centred and inconsiderate regime. There is, in her description, no contest; hence Jeff comes out looking something of a cold fish. Here is a lovely example of 'chat' once again being a good thing, loading the dice in the speaker's favour. 7. Concluding comments I started out saying that the word 'chat' was something of an insult. That certainly might apply when the word is used (or might be used, or is allegedly used) in a discussion about human action, and someone who wants to push the 'real', the 'material' and the 'consequential' might use 'chat' to dismiss an opponent who wants words to be responsible for some rather substantial things: reality, materiality and consequentiality. But there's a nice paradox. When you do take words seriously as doing things, and you look for what 'chat' does in people's actual usage, you find that it isn't an insult. Far from it. In the four cases we looked at the speaker was using 'chat' as a basically pleasant, socially positive and blameless description. Of course, they were doing so for rhetorical purposes, as words always are. But nevertheless there's a paradox there. In the abstract, nasty; in actuality, nice. The one thing that's constant is the fact that, in our analyses, both the hypothetical insulters and our actual glossers are using the word. In the mouths of both parties 'chat' is an interested description, as the discursive psychologists have it, following the tradition established by Garfinkel and, especially, Harvey Sacks (see, for example, the compendious Lectures on Conversation). It is always heard as a contrast (implicit or not) with something else, and does its work that way. Like it or not, 'chat' is no polite cipher. If you look at how it's folded and manipulated into the interaction, you see how it will smooth a potentially difficult interview, naturalise a possibly unwelcome encounter or set up a loaded distinction againt something mechanical and self-interested. All human life is here. If anyone needed persuading that 'chat' isn't chat, then the examples we've looked at here might have gone some way to doing so. References Atkinson, J. M., and J. Heritage, eds. Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Edwards, D., and J. Potter. Discursive Psychology. London: Sage, 1992. Labov, W. Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1972. Rapley, M., and C. Antaki. "A Conversation Analysis of the 'Acquiescence' of People with Learning Disabilities." Journal of Community and Applied Psychology 6 (1996): 371-91. Reddy, M. J. "The Conduit Metaphor - A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language." Metaphor and Thought. Ed. A. Ortony. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1979. Sacks, H. Lectures on Conversation. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Notation The notation follows that of Gail Jefferson described in Atkinson and Heritage (ix - xvi), with the following deviations: (..) and (...) are untimed pauses of about .4 and .8 of a second approximately. The author would like to thank Liz Holt and Derek Edwards for permission to use transcript extracts 3 and 4, whose details are as follows -- Extract 3: Holt: 1988 Undated: Side I: Call 4 Extract 4: DE-JF/C1/S1 @ 12 June, 1993 Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Antaki. "Two Rhetorical Uses of the Description 'Chat'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/uses.php>. Chicago style: Charles Antaki, "Two Rhetorical Uses of the Description 'Chat'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/uses.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Antaki. (2000) Two rhetorical uses of the description 'chat'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/uses.php> ([your date of access]).